Erika Tan

Erika Tan (; born 1967) is a London-based Singaporean contemporary artist and curator whose research-led practice emerges from her interests in anthropology and the moving image. Her recent research examines the postcolonial and transnational, working with archival artefacts, exhibition histories, received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices, and the movement of ideas, people and objects.

Tan's work has been exhibited internationally, including Cities on the Move at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1999, the 2006 Singapore Biennale, Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe in 2007, and Persistent Visions at NUS Museum, Singapore, and Vargas Museum, Philippines from 2009 to 2010.

More recently, she has participated in exhibitions such as the Artist and Empire exhibition by Tate and National Gallery Singapore from 2016 to 2017, the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017, and As the West Slept at the World Trade Center, New York in 2019. This was followed by an Advanced Diploma in Film & Video and a Master in Fine Art at the Central Saint Martins School of Art, London. Emerging from an ongoing discussion between NUS Museum curators and Tan since 2009, the exhibition featured an installation re-visiting and adapting artefacts and writings from the exhibition Camping and Tramping Through The Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya (2011-2013) alongside newer film, sculpture, and works on paper developed by Tan. The Lab at NTU CCA was utilised as an exhibition space, a film studio and the site of a live "broadcast" debate between two competing teams. Building on her research about the weaver Halimah, the installation featured digitally manipulated video, strips of textile and archival images. Taking from the physical site of the gallery, Tan filmed her work before the museum had opened to the public in November 2015, with scenes set in exhibition spaces while works were still being hung. The "Forgotten" Weaver brings together two works dealing with the weaver Halimah, including Apa Jika, The Mis-placed Comma (I, II, III) and an installation taking the form of a loom, with white threads forming a weave-like structure. In 2018, the Wolverhampton Art Gallery re-staged the Diaspora Pavilion, featuring seven of the original 19 artists, including Tan's The "Forgotten" Weaver.